Police confirmed on Friday, however, that the body was not that of a child but of a 39-year-old woman buried in 1969.

Forensic teams and medical experts made the revelation, something that took Lars Wetterlund, head of the cemetery, by surprise.

"This is unbelievable. I saw the hand and the arm. This must have been a unique case for the body to have been so well preserved. It could be that the ground was airtight, but this was just sand," he told the TT news agency.

Wetterlund was stumped by the fact that the body was found just 130 centimetres underground, when the cemetery usually buries people a further 20 centimetres deeper.

"But we don't think something like this will happen again," he said, adding that it would be up to the Catholic congregation to decide whether the woman's family should be contacted over the matter.